But it seems that the UK government feels it hasn't punished those foolish enough to live beyond the white cliffs of Dover as much as it could, and has come up with a cunning new plan to show Jane and Johnny Foreigner they are not welcome in any way, shape or form. The government department that handles immigration and the granting of UK visas has just announced that there will be some additional discrimination, specifically:

customers [applying from outside the UK] who contact UK Visas and Immigration by email will be charged £5.48 [about $7]

While true-blue emails born in the pure digital air of Britain's sceptered isle can still be sent free of charge, any emails containing filthy foreign IP packets will be whacked with a $7 charge, presumably to have their electrons scrubbed clean of transmissible diseases and the smell of garlic.

The underlying message to people thinking about visiting the UK should therefore be clear: you and your pathetic tourist spending power are no longer wanted. Just like in the US.

from the slow-learners dept

Apparently we're still rather idiotically feeling out the boundaries of cell phone etiquette and common sense after decades of cellular phone experience. Last week a Broadway play attendee nonchalantly climbed on stage before a production of Hand of God to use the set's (inoperable and quite fake) power outlet. When tracked down by one news outlet, the man proudly proclaimed that he was drunk, and that he needed to charge his phone just then because "girls were calling all day. What would you do?" There's a video of said nitwit's public apology to the theater community making the rounds.

We're apparently not much better when it comes to enforcing cell phone etiquette. A week later, Actor Patti LuPone broke proscenium and ripped a cell phone out of a theater attendee's hands after the audience member wouldn't stop texting during a performance. LuPone issued a statement shortly thereafter suggesting that idiots without etiquette have forced her hand in the matter, and she's not thrilled to be forced into the role of audience baby sitter:

We work hard on stage to create a world that is being totally destroyed by a few, rude, self-absorbed and inconsiderate audience members who are controlled by their phones. They cannot put them down. When a phone goes off or when a LED screen can be seen in the dark it ruins the experience for everyone else - the majority of the audience at that performance and the actors on stage. I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work on stage anymore. Now I’m putting battle gear on over my costume to marshall the audience as well as perform.

Across the pond, police have shown they're still learning the lines of cell phone etiquette as well, after UK Transit police had to walk back a recent decision to arrest a 45-year-old man for "abstracting electricity" by charging his iPhone via a train power outlet:

"She said I’m abstracting electricity. She kept saying it’s a crime. We were just coming into the station and there happened to be about four police officers on the platform.

"She called to them and said: 'This guy’s been abstracting electricity, he needs to be arrested'."

Some Internet forum users state that the outlets are generally reserved for cleaning the trains, and often feature stickers stating "not for public use." Still, if transit authorities don't want people using the outlets, it makes sense to make them less accessible. The law in question is also pretty clearly focused on cheating utility meters and is reserved for "high value" theft where the victim faces "substantial loss," making the case a bit of a tough sell. As a result, the police subsequently "de-arrested" the man after realizing that they were "abstracting" common sense from their daily enforcement practices:

"We were called to Camden Road London Overground station on Friday 10 July to a report of a man becoming aggressive when challenged by a PCSO about his use of a plug socket onboard an Overground train."

"Shortly after 3.30pm, a 45-year-old man from Islington was arrested on suspicion of abstracting electricity, for which he was de-arrested shortly after. He was further arrested for unacceptable behaviour and has been reported for this offence."

Given that Motorola researcher Martin Cooper designed the first cell phone back in 1973, you'd think that after 42 years of experience with the devices we'd be a little better at understanding the socially-acceptable norms for using them -- and preventing their use. Of course given that people still talk in movie theaters, often don't pay attention to what their kids are doing, and frequently treat one another abysmally, that inconsiderate boneheadedness certainly isn't the fault of the technology.

from the real-american-heroes dept

Police: they have a job that demands respect, even if those doing the job occassionally do not. We talk a great deal here at Techdirt about some of the frightening uses of military grade equipment by local law enforcement agencies, about what sometimes seems like a neverending list of civil rights abuses, and so on. Still, as I said, I respect the job. It's my respect for that job that leads me to think that the Portland cops who arrested a homeless woman for charging her phone on a public outlet need a greater understanding of what it is exactly that police in this stupid country are supposed to do.

Now, if you're thinking to yourself, "There's no way police in Portland arrested a person just for plugging her cell phone charger into a public outlet," well, you're correct; they arrested two people for that in one trip.

In this case, the theft was first reported by Portland Patrol Inc., and two Portland police officers followed up to issue the woman and her co-defendant, a homeless man who was also charging his cellphone at the planter box outlet, citations to appear in court for third-degree theft of services — a Class C misdemeanor. According to the Electrical Research Institute, it costs about 25 cents a year to charge the average mobile phone. If the phone in this scenario had gone from zero charge to full charge, the cost would have amounted to mere fractions of a penny.

“Jackie,” (who did not want her real name used), says she was shocked when four uniformed officers all agreed her actions warranted not only their response, but also charges and a court summons.

Let's play a quick game. Pick out which part of the pull quote above is the most ridiculous aspect of this story. Got it? You picked the part where the homeless woman and a homeless man were charged with theft for plugging in their phones to a public outlet, didn't you? Well, you're wrong. That is ridiculous, of course, but any single police officer might be some asshole idiot capable of being this dumb. No, the most ridiculous part of the above pull quote is that it took four goddamned officers to respond to this request, and they still reached the conclusion that a citation was warranted. If these aren't verified to be the four dimmest officers on Portland's force, then the entire city has much larger problems.

Oh, and should you be waiting to jump into the comments with some snarky question about why a homeless woman should have a cell phone in the first place, please keep in mind that phones cost less than houses. Also, shut up. Because strictly from the point of view of safety, not to mention the hopes of having any kind of future employment or way to communicate with social services, a cell phone at this point is so necessary for the homeless, not to mention everyone else, that the government should probably be furnishing everyone with some kind of holographic communciations and record-keeping tool that appears on your forearm when needed.

Pictured: a homeless person in President Geigner's America

Now, the Jackie in this story has never before been convicted of a crime, but she missed her court date after losing her citation because, well, where the shit is she going to put it? It's not like she's got a damned file cabinet stocked up in the house she doesn't own. Knowing she missed the court date, Jackie turned herself in to the police and ended up being booked into jail. Keep in mind, if you can, that this is all over "stealing" electricity at levels of "fractions of a penny." Jackie is on several waiting lists for assisted housing and might actually want to work someplace in the future, but, if convicted, she'll always have to be checking that "been convicted of a crime" box now on applications, thanks to a dumb law and four brave boys in blue.

And don't think that this is a completely isolated incident, either.

Jackie’s was not an isolated incident. Public defender Jane Fox says she’s seen similar cases.

“It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s just insane,” says Fox. “The (case) that I had was somebody charging their phone by the Greyhound bus station. Don’t you have a reasonable expectation that an outlet near the bus station would be OK?”

Only if you thought there was such a thing as common sense, which is clearly in short enough supply so as to no longer be common. As I said, I respect the job of the police, but I sure don't respect the job that these four defenders of the public good managed to do. And just to wrap a nice bow on how stupid this all is, how much do you think the public is paying in tax money to prosecute Jackie's fractions-of-a-penny theft? It seems likely that the paper the citation was written up on cost the taxpayers more than what she did, not to mention getting everyone in the court system involved. And, yet, Jackie's the one stealing from taxpayers? Please...

Singer is somewhat obsessed with Churchill, running an entire bookstore devoted to Churchill. As such, he actually says he's had a very good relationship with Churchill's heirs for years. But when he finally sought to write a book on Churchill himself, the family went the usual route and claimed no quotations unless you pay. The approximate rate: 50 cents per word. Quoting other Churchill relatives also costs money and the rates may differ. As Singer explains, he basically had to significantly cut back on what he quoted, and completely excise some Churchill family members from the book. But he did have to pay for the 3,872 words he used that included direct quotations from Churchill -- though the family gave him a slight discount, such that he had to pay £950 -- which works out to about 40 cents per word.

Singer admits that, while some lawyers told him he could fight this, he gave in to keep up his strong relationship with the family. Of course, that only brings to mind Churchill's quote:

An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile--hoping it will eat him last.

Also:

You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

It's too bad Singer chose not to stand up more.

To be honest, the podcast is a little weak in that it doesn't go too deep into the legal issues here and how they can impact history, culture and research. Furthermore, it does little to explore the actual law and how far the Churchill estate is overreaching. Oddly, it seems to suggest that this is just "the way" that the UK's copyright laws work (not quite true) and then does a little section on the attempts by the UK government to reform the laws -- even though the UK government decided to reject the idea of including a US-style fair use exception.

Stephen Dubner then talks to Steve Levitt about copyright in general, and claims that his take is "un-economic" because he doesn't seem to care much for stringent enforcement of copyright, and would prefer to share his own works more widely. I don't see how that's un-economic at all. In fact, as Levitt notes, his own status goes up as the work is more widely shared, increasing all sorts of opportunities elsewhere. I actually found this part of the discussion kind of disappointing, as there were a bunch of interesting nuanced directions in which it could have gone, including a much deeper analysis of the economics of copying, but instead, they went with the standard line from people who are just exploring this topic for the first time, which I'll paraphrase as: "well of course copyright is important, and we don't want anyone copying our book, but perhaps it goes too far in some cases."

The parts on Churchill are interesting, and hopefully Dubner (and Levitt?) will follow up in more detail down the road. For example, it would be great for them to bring on Chris Sprigman and Kal Raustiala, who they've had guest-post for them in the past, considering they've written an entire book on these kinds of things.

Edison Junior is returning everyone's money -- even covering credit card fees and Kickstarter's fees (though it's asking Kickstarter to give that back as well), but is reasonably angry. According to VentureBeat:

“We are pissed,” Edison Junior CEO Jamie Siminoff told me on the phone today. “I think they are being a bunch of assholes, and I think they’re hurting their customers.”

Understandable. The company plans to still build versions of the device that focus on the Android market, and which might possibly work with Apple products if people use adapters, but it's certainly not ideal.

The whole thing, of course, is silly, but representative of the unfortunate world we live in today where companies lock up their products. In the past, building alternate versions or compatible accessories, and reverse engineering parts, was generally considered part of how an ecosystem was built up around your market. But Apple's infatuation with over-controlling its market only serves to piss off Apple customers who want a solution like this. Unfortunately, due to the nature of using security chips and claiming patents on everything, rather than just being a simple reverse engineering challenge, Apple is effectively able to use patent and copyright laws to block any such innovation.

from the the-kinect-as-box-office/toll-booth dept

Here's a scenario for you: at some point in the the near future, you sit down in front of your Xbox 720/960/1080 and queue up a little video-on-demand from the Live Arcade selection of movies. You select a film from the menu and, before you can press the "Play" button, you are greeted with another menu giving you several price points, depending on how many people will be watching.

The patent application, filed under the heading “Content Distribution Regulation by Viewing User,” proposes to use cameras and sensors like those in the Xbox 360 Kinect controller to monitor, count and in some cases identify the people in a room watching television, movies and other content. The filing refers to the technology as a “consumer detector.”

In one scenario, the system would then charge for the television show or movie based on the number of viewers in the room. Or, if the number of viewers exceeds the limits laid out by a particular content license, the system would halt playback unless additional viewing rights were purchased.

While it's a little early in the process to decide whether this is actually a pursuit Microsoft deems worthy of implementing or just some brainstorming put on paper, there's no denying that media companies and content providers would certainly not mind at all if an enterprising group could create something that would allow them to monetize every eyeball in the house.

While Kinect hackers have managed to crank out some very interesting uses of the body-tracking technology, it looks as though the in-house team has something a bit more devious up its collective sleeve. With this in place, PPV events could move to the Xbox to get the most bang for their buck during prize fights and MMA bouts. Movies rented through XBLA (Xbox Live Arcade) could rake in even more money by charging for each additional set of eyeballs, leading to Xbox owners treating their own living rooms like drive-ins and sneaking in additional viewers through piles of coats lying strategically on the floor.

Every use may not be as mercenary as the above scenario, however. The Kinect "Consumer Detector" could also prevent younger (or at least, shorter) eyeballs from being sullied by R-rated movies or, god forbid, porn.

The system could also take into account the age of viewers, limiting playback of mature content to adults, for example. This patent application doesn’t explain how that would work, but a separate Microsoft patent application last year described a system for using sensors to estimate age based on the proportions of their body.

Unfortunately, this will prevent pornstar midgets from viewing porn, but please, let's think of the children, each of whom represents a potential income stream.

The intro paragraph of the application lends itself to use for many different royalty collecting entities. In addition to the mentioned Pay Per View/Video-on-Demand possibilities, there's also performance rights organizations to be considered, because once you start talking licenses, they're never far behind.

A method of distributing content to a user, comprising: providing a selection of content available to the user; for each content, presenting a licensing option comprising associating a performance of the content with an individual user's consumption of the content at a display device; receiving a selection of one of the content and a license display option for said content; presenting the content to the display device if a number of user performances allowed for the content is equal to or less than the license option for which the selection is received; and monitoring the presentation of the content at the device to determine the number of users consuming the content during the performance.

This description, along with the methods listed below it in the filing, seem to indicate that your fully-paid and relatively peaceful viewing of a movie or prize fight could come to an instant halt and ask you to feed the meter any time someone new walks into the room. Or better yet, the new system could push already-strained friendships to the limit. "Oh, hey. I'd invite you in but I'm only got enough money for five people. Sorry, man. Maybe next time." AWKWARD.

But beyond the fact that this patent, if granted and implemented, will create a whole new level of rent-seeking across a wide swath of the "creative industries," there's also privacy issues that need to be addressed. Does any company, whether it's Microsoft or any of the upstream content providers, have the right to basically scan your living room for signs of life simply because they're the one licensing the content? For that matter, is it any of their business how many people you have watching a movie or listening to music in your private residence? It certainly never has been before, but with the advent of digital distribution (and its accompanying "licenses"), the attempts to wring every last dollar out of every bit of content will continue.

Will "buying for five but watching for ten" become the new "piracy?" Pursuing this angle isn't going to make Microsoft any friends, at least not in terms of customers. Consumers' first reaction would probably be to toss the "Consumer Detector," in which case it's not difficult to imagine it becoming a mandatory piece of equipment for certain applications. After that, for consumers concerned about this, their only option would be to toss the Xbox. I don't think Microsoft has enough confidence in the future of its console line to take that chance.

Microsoft is known for revealing additional product details in job postings, but a new round of listings has unveiled a brand new TV service. Described as a "Cloud-based TV platform," Microsoft is looking to hire engineers to build client applications for the service. LiveSide spotted several job postings related to Cloud TV recently that tempt job candidates to "get in on the ground floor of an ambitious new project."

Combining this with the above patent opens up the possibility that Microsoft could be crafting the content delivery system that watches you back, delivering headcounts to media companies and cutting off customers who violate the license terms by exceeding the limits declared by the copyright holder. At this point, the whole setup is full of easily exploitable holes. The odds of this coming to market are extremely low, if for no other reason than the potential backlash against any company involved. But it's not impossible, either. There are many rent-seekers in the content market and many of them have never shied away from a new source of income just because it might be unpopular. (At least, not at first. Many have walked back ideas due to public outcry, but they rarely seem to discard bad ideas before trying to implement them first.) Microsoft doesn't seem to share the same enthusiasm for angering the public to make incremental gains, but its design team has crafted a handy backdoor for a whole new level of IP enforcement—one that will only widen the gap between what consumers feel are acceptable limitations and what the content industries believe they should be.

from the you-gotta-wonder dept

Way back when Friendster was the super hot social networking startup with an unworkable business model, there was suddenly a rush of rumors that the company was going to start charging for use. Even though the company never suggested plans to charge, there was an outcry among users -- and I remember getting messages from people threatening to boycott Friendster if it ever did charge. In fact, many people started suggesting alternatives... with MySpace being a key one. It wasn't long after this episode that many people really did start migrating over to MySpace. Later on there were reports that the "rumors" about Friendster charging were actually started (and then spread) by MySpace employees. And it worked.

It looks like someone may be trying to pull the same trick with Facebook. Apparently a bunch of rumors have been spreading about Facebook planning to charge, resulting in huge protest groups in Facebook, and the company needing to make a public denial of any plans to charge. In Facebook's case, this is even more believable because the company claims that it's already profitable from existing ad sales. And, knowing how Facebook operates, I can't see anyone there seriously considering charging for use. They know the idea is preposterous and would destroy the site.

So the only thing I'm wondering is who kicked off these rumors? Is it another social network? Is it MySpace again trying to regain relevance? Or was it really just another malware scam to get people to click on unsafe links, that then resulted in a misguided panic?

from the so-much-for-that-plan dept

Is Rupert Murdoch flip-flopping on paywalls again? Way back when (i.e., two years ago) Murdoch was a big believer in the idea that news should be free online, and that he could more than make it up with other business models. But, then, earlier this year, he did a complete flip-flop, declaring that all his publications would put up paywalls, saying that free content is bad, and accusing aggregators and search engines of "stealing" content. Some speculated that it was all a ploy to get others to put up paywalls. Though, others just think Murdoch's getting a little senile. Either way, it looks like he's stalling a bit. Jay Rosen points us to the news that Murdoch is "postponing" the date for when he wants his papers to have paywalls. It's not clear if the delay is due to technical difficulties in implementing a paywall, or if he's actually reconsidering. Either way, it doesn't look like the great big paywall is going up any time soon.

from the this-will-end-poorly dept

Fresh off vague and undefined plans to put up a paywall on various news sites, it seems that Murdoch's latest misguided target for digital angst is Amazon. ikonoclasm alerts us to the news that Murdoch is angry and threatening to remove all News Corp. material from the kindle unless Amazon is willing to hand over subscriber names and info to News Corp., despite having just negotiated a larger share of revenue. Of course, the subscribers themselves might actually like the fact that Amazon isn't handing out their user info. Either way, it seems like Murdoch is suddenly hellbent on making it more difficult to read any of his content digitally.

from the which-rupert-is-rupert dept

Rupert Murdoch continues to shift his position on the value of "free content" but he seems to be going in the wrong direction, and not giving anyone much confidence that he knows what he's doing. You may recall that right before he completed buying the Wall Street Journal, he claimed that the WSJ would be better off going entirely free:

"We are studying it and we expect to make that free, and instead of having 1 million [subscribers], having at least 10 million to 15 million in every corner of the earth.... Will you lose $50 million to $100 million in revenue? I don't think so. If the site is good, you'll get much more."

That was just under two years ago, and his reasoning is actually quite sensible. However, after he took it over, there was apparently some back-and-forth and the Journal convinced Rupert to keep it behind a (somewhat porous) paywall. Of course, as many note, the WSJ is able to charge because of the reputation of its content (far above most other publications) and the fact that it's reporting financial info, where the direct value can be quite high to many readers.

And then he complained about Yahoo/Google "stealing" (he later changed it to "taking") content. Of course, that's not true. Both Yahoo and Google either link to content or have license deals. There is no "taking" of anything.

Either way, given those statements, perhaps it's no surprise at all that Murdoch is now planning to put paywalls across all his online news properties in the relatively near future. Apparently the plan will be based on the WSJ model, meaning that some stories were be available for free, but there will be severe limits. Given how many old school newspaper guys have talked about putting up a paywall, this isn't much of a surprise (though, it is still odd given his comments from two years ago).

That said, if newspapers are going to charge for online content, then let's see them go and charge. I think it will fail (miserably), but let's see him try to prove us wrong. Here's why I think it will fail:

Those other sites don't have the qualities that make some people willing to pay for the WSJ. The quality isn't as good and the direct monetary benefit is not nearly as clear.

Most of those other sites have much clearer (free) competition.

Nowhere at all does Murdoch talk about actually giving people a reason to buy. All he's saying is that if they put up a paywall, people will pay. Sure, a few might, but it's a small number, and doing so will stagnate any sort of growth, piss off advertisers, and allow competitors to take a giant leap forward -- all in one shot.

But... if he wants to charge and thinks that these points are incorrect, we're eager to see how Murdoch gets around these issues. In the meantime, if you work for a publication that competes with a Murdoch news site, start revving up a marketing/promotional campaign about how you don't charge, and see how much market share you can build. Unless, of course, Rafat Ali is correct in his thinking, suggesting that this is all a big bluff to get others to put up a paywall. I don't believe it though... because if I'm a competitor the fact that Murdoch is going paywall, gives me even more reasons not to do so.